Implications for Regions and Industries

Makoto Hirano, Mitsuhiro Kurashige and Kiyonori Sakakibara

Yanagiya Machinery Co. Ltd was initially involved in processing local fish to steamed fish paste, as one of the small regional enterprises in Japanese traditional craft-like industries, over 100 years ago. However, they have recently grown to be a medium-sized enterprise with over 150 employees and annual sales of over 4 billion yen. Their current business areas are designing, manufacturing and selling machines for producing processed foods – mainly steamed fish paste. Nowadays, they are developing and exporting machines for a variety of manufacturing needs within the processed foods industry. This chapter describes how they have shifted their operations to such a growing market domain and how they have developed original technologies with competitive competence. Their experience of transforming the business could be instructive to other regional small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in declining manufacturing industries.

Implications for Regions and Industries

Michael Olsson

Distance-friction parameters are often used to calculate accessibility and potential measures, used as explanatory variables in other studies. In this chapter, two forms of the constrained gravity model are estimated to capture proximity-preference and distance-friction parameters, the effect of house prices and wages present in the commuting pattern in Sweden. The first purpose is to investigate distance-friction parameters over time. This investigation is fruitful, since one major deviation from earlier results is observed. The second purpose is to investigate if adding wage and housing-expenditure constraints affect the distance-friction parameters. It turns out that these additional constraints have only minor effects on the distance-friction parameters. The main conclusion is that the distance-friction parameters change over time. In order to have accurate distance-friction parameters, such investigations should be repeated from now and again. In such investigations, the base form of the model is sufficient.

Implications for Regions and Industries

Ozan Hovardaoğlu

Conflicts between generations and the effects of these challenges represent a specific field of research in economics, which seem to share a common focal point. They either focus on the problem of the generation gap in single economic organizations or on the problem of succession in family firms. In this chapter, however, I attempt to identify how local development experiences are influenced by the transitions from predecessor generations to their successors. The influences of generational transition on the local pathways of development are analysed through the local development experience of the city of Kayseri in Turkey. It is found that generational transition deeply affects local institutional structures, which sometimes results in institutional tensions that negatively influence economic development efforts, but sometimes results in construction of new institutions that create a more productive economic climate.

Becoming America

Roger White

We review U.S. immigration history during the 1875–1920 period, when federal legislation imposed explicit qualitative restrictions on immigration. The Page Act of 1875 prohibited the entry of forced laborers, Asian women who might engage in prostitution, and convicted criminals. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) halted Chinese immigration to the U.S. for ten years and prohibited Chinese residents of the U.S. from becoming citizens. In 1892, the Geary Act extended the ban for an additional decade, and required all Chinese living in the U.S. to carry permits. As expiration of the Geary Act neared, the Scott Act was passed, further extending the ban. Two years later, the ban on Chinese immigration to the U.S. was made permanent. Additional legislation also limited immigration, with arrivals from Northern and Western Europe continuing to receive preferential treatment. Even so, during this period, we see large numbers of immigrants arrive from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Roger White

Becoming America

Roger White

We review U.S. immigration history during the period from 1968 through 2015. The Hart-Celler Act (1968) abolished the National Origins Quota System and changed the bases for immigrant entry to promote family reunification, fill labor market vacancies, and accommodate refugees and asylum-seekers. This led to a pronounced increase in the number of arrivals, to 765,258 immigrants in a typical year during the period. It also resulted in a shift in the primary source countries/regions of immigrant arrivals. Asia’s share of the immigrant inflow increased from 4.9 percent during the 1921–1967 period to 31.2 percent. The share of the total inflow that arrived from Latin America and the Caribbean more than doubled, from 21.9 percent to 44.4 percent. Immigrants from Africa have accounted for 5 percent of the total inflow since 1968. We have witnessed a corresponding decrease in the immigrant share value for Europe, from 53.8 percent to 11.9 percent.

Becoming America

Roger White

We review U.S. immigration history during the period from 1921 through 1967. The Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Johnson-Reed Act (1924) established and revised the National Origins Quota System, augmenting existing qualitative restrictions on immigration with quantitative restrictions. This greatly reduced immigrant inflows, including arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe, while affording a large percentage of the quota allocation to Northern and Western Europe. The McCarran-Walter Act (1952) eliminated race as a barrier to immigration and citizenship, allowed immediate relatives of citizens to enter without numerical restriction, and revised the National Origins Formula. Even so, quota limits and the bias favoring immigration from Northern and Western Europe remained in place. During this period, the annual average inflow of 203,395 immigrants was markedly smaller than the average inflow of 537,945 witnessed during the 1885-1920 period, and much closer to the average annual inflow of 161,390 observed between 1820 and 1884.

Becoming America

Roger White

We consider population projections for the period from 2015 through 2065, including expected demographics of the U.S. foreign-born population. Based on the projections, by mid-century, immigrants from Asia will eclipse Hispanic immigrants to account for a plurality of arrivals, and Asians and Hispanics will collectively account for 37 percent of the U.S. population. Accordingly, the U.S. population will become increasingly diverse. As with the Columbian Exchange, current and future immigrants are expected to imprint the cultures of their respective source countries on American culture. To a degree, immigrants will certainly assimilate into American culture; however, there will also be an acculturation process that is expected to continue the shift of American culture away from the cultures of European nations and towards the cultures of source countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, South America, and Africa.

Implications for Regions and Industries

Georgeanne M. Artz, Zizhen Guo and Peter F. Orazem

We review the literature on rural firm entry and survival, and summarize key findings from our own recent work on this topic. Our research suggests the location choices of entrepreneurs are tied to an unobservable match between the entrepreneur and the location of the venture that enhances firm productivity and increases survival in both rural and urban places. We conjecture that entrepreneurs have place-specific human capital that affects firm entry and plays a role in firm exit and succession. In thin, rural markets, the probability of finding another entrepreneur with the same location-specific skillset to purchase the firm is low, and there are fewer alternative uses for the assets in the market. As a result, rural firms face a type of asset fixity problem which reduces exit, even as market condition lower profitability. This implies a role for place-based economic development and for rural businesses transition policies.

Edited by Charlie Karlsson, Andreas P. Cornett and Tina Wallin

Becoming America

Roger White

We introduce our topic and provide an overview of the book. We posit a clear bias in U.S. immigration policy that favored entry from Europe and, notably, from Northern and Western European countries until the enactment of the Hart-Celler Act in 1968 (i.e., the Immigration Act of 1965). Only in recent decades have there been a significant increase in the number of annual immigrant arrivals and a considerable shift in the source countries and regions of immigrant arrivals to the U.S. towards Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean, and, to a lesser extent, Africa. We contend that many recent immigrant arrivals to the U.S. have entered a country that is quite culturally dissimilar from their countries of origin. However, through acculturation there has been a movement of U.S. culture away from that of the more traditional European immigrant source countries and towards the cultures of the more recent arrivals’ home countries.

Implications for Regions and Industries

Amjad Naveed

The major contributions within the field of urban studies are biased towards large cities, and the effect of creativity and knowledge on the development of big metropolitan cities and regions have been emphasized. However, very few studies have recognized the available potential of small and medium-sized cities (SMSCs). This study identifies the key determinants (from existing literature) that are required to implement the knowledge-based strategies in SMSCs. Moreover, what are the important sources of growth in SMSCs? The findings of this study show that the role of local authorities, support from urban governments, community engagement, available endogenous resources, and amenities are the key factors that are required to implement the knowledge-based strategies in SMSCs. Furthermore, the creative workforce, entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and higher educational institutions are the important determinants of growth in SMSCs.